Aggh, people! Some people should just be shot for inconsideration and just plain inappropriate behavior, unthinking scoundrels.
Why can’t they just think! Oh so you are at a beach drinking. What is the one thing that would be really inappropriate in such a place? Oh I know lets just smash a heap of bottles and leave them there, on a beach, where people are known to walk barefooted!
This morning me and Nades arrived at Corsair bay at 7am, only to find the ramp and the surrounding area covered in smashed glass. We gingerly made our way down into the water (which seemed even colder than last time). We did our swim, which was quite pleasant. But afterward we decided to clear up as much of the glass that we could. Probably took us over half a hour. Aghhhh it really makes me angry. There are heaps of dogs that visit the area and there would bound to be children later in the day, though probably not swimming yet.
Now I am just starting to get paranoid about the possibility of submerged glass that I could stand on cut the foot open. That could possible say good bye for wanaka, if I couldn’t run for several weeks. I am seriously thinking investing in some swimming booties as not a bad idea.
On other news, this is the end of my easy week. I get to start a new program next week… though still waiting for it with bated breath, come on Jo want to know what the next 6 weeks has in store for me 
Though when a easy week includes a 4 hour session, I have shake my head. Actually I think easy weeks just means the 5 weekdays, weekends are excluded. The four hour session was a 2 hr bike followed by 2hr run. Wasn’t looking forward to that run. So did short bays, which actually only takes me 1:45 but couldn’t be bothered doing a extra 15 minutes. I thought the bike had done its bit and I make up for it on the run.
The run start pretty well, the original plan was to run along the base to St Martins and run up valley track, along the summit and home. But I thought that might actually take me a smidgen too long and running on the flat was boring me, so decided to head up Major Aiken Drive. Not quite sure why I thought that was a good idea. Though I was rather happy with my bodies abilty to cope and did walk to near thr very top, where I resorted to some off tracking… It was a awesome day weatherwise, I think it was the first time this season that I was seeking out the shade as I ran. Plus I forgot sunscreen , didn’t get burnt but can feel it slightly on the face.
Would some one please stop the time! Days just disapearing…
My 6 week program is almost over and time for a new one, and now only 11 weeks left to Wanaka.
Well that is close to 3 months, so heaps right? But its only 2 programmes left to go.
And people are talking about xmas! Please stop that, I do not wnat to think about that yet.
On a postive note, I had a awesome swim this morning. 70min non-stop.
Went to the pool with some severe doubts. It has been over a week since I was in the pool and that along with “non-stop” would be a strain me menatally. But I went in to do it and come hell or high water I was going to complete the entire 70min. I have no idea how far I swam, I loose count so don’t even try these days.
I decided today, that most of the cyclists in chch are just like sheep. They just follow each other. Don’t they ever want to break off on there own and try a different direction? (take your mind back to those dog trials that they used to have on TV when I was about 10) I felt like that sheep that didn’t follow the pack and was very troublesome to the dog rounding them up.
Yes, I have now offended ALL chch cyclists. I have done the long bays/short bays so may times I am sure that there should be a grove in the road from my tires alone. But I have to say I find them by themselves boring and if I may say a bit easy (unless you doing multiple, that isn’t easy). There are other places to go that will challenge you a bit more….
Where is all this coming from? I decided to do reverse long bays this morning. And the number of cyclists I came across completly overwelmed me. I actually wondered if there was a race I didn’t know about, and “I’m sure harbour ride is not for another month”. As I was going along I just kept on wondering why cyclists always seem to stick to the same routes. We don’t mix it up very much… well I do try, but it is very easy to just say, I’ll just go do Short Bays etc etc.
Well I think its time to change things up! Don’t do a route that you have done before, go elsewhere do something different!
Ok.. bizarre thoughts rant over and I’ll try not to offend anyone again.
Lets get back to the training….. Ummm not a good week.
Monday night I woke up in the middle of night and the world was spinning. Ugggh crap a inner ear infection. It not the first I have had, I do, in fact , get them fairly often. Though it has been a while. It hasn’t prevented me from training. Well except for swimming, I thought it best to hold of the swimming till it clears up a bit more. But it does make me feel really tired and I have had a couple of bad sessions this week.
On Thursday I had a 1hr flat run. I got to 30min and just gave up and walked home. Nothing was really going well, and there was nothing benficial happening in that session, so really no point to continue. I also completly skipped the cycle session I was supposed to have that day.
This weekend was supposed to be a biggy. Saturday was a 1hr bike followed by a 3hr run. I had asked Jo how hard I should do the bike and she wanted it reaonably hard, my legs needed to be tired by the time I had finished. So it was a big gear push out to tai tap and back. The legs felt like lead, but I still managed to average 30K so was pretty happy with myslef. Once I changed into the run I headed up the hill (I finally found a reason to go up the steps at the end of Valley Rd, shite they are harder than I expected), I was Okish heading up the hill but once I reached the kiwi and was following the crater rim I felt empty. I was swalling the gels down more often than I should off, I just felt empty, nothing to grab the energy from. I decided that the hills wasn’t working, maybe the flat would be better, so I headed down Kennedys bush. But once I got to the road I just had nothing and very soon was calling for rescue because that 30 odd min it would take me to get home just seemed like at huge mountain to climb.
Today was a bit better, but I was still feeling the lack of energy. I stopped at tai tap and bought a coke, and had swallowed the whole lot by the time I got to halswell. But I didn’t really feek any buzz or increase in energy that I would normally get from that.
Easy week coming up. Maybe that will give me a chance to reocover a bit better and be ready for more in the following weeks.
But when you are going the reverse direction that cyclist are generally going you get really really sick of saying hi to every passing cyclist.
Did the figure 8 this morning. Well there are a few versions to the figure 8 but mine goes dyers – kiwi – govenors-gebbies-coopers-kiwi – Govenors- lytellton – Evans – Mt pleasant – kiwi – dyers. I have to say it is one of my favorite routes now. I did this route about 3 weeks ago and it was much easier today. One of the things I like about it is you doing have to do the bitches in reverse. I will honestly do Coopers twice over if it means that I don’t have to do the Bitches. Its quite a good motivation when you are half way up Coopers – “Well if you turn around now you’ll have to go over the bitches to get back”. I do like doing a long climb, much much more than smaller sharper climbs. You get to sit back, get a rhythm and just keep going. probably why I like this route so much. The climbs gebbies -coopers and evans -mt Pleasant are the longest climbs around so you get a good chance to get that rhythm going.
Having said that half way up to Mt Pleasant I was starting to get a bit over it and almost convinced myself to descend. But I talked myself out of that and continued along the summit and saw the Kiwi for the third time today.
A boob tube and running?
Ok this has to worse than Anitas running undies. Honestly as I was going up Mt Pleasant there was a chick running down in a boob tube. How the how does that support anything?? Ok so she wasn’t that big, but still there was a fair amount of jiggling… that has to be one of the bizarre things I have seen.
Did my good dead for the day
I started my run off the bike, and started to run around Criten Tce. It takes me past a path to the Playground. There was a kid around the corner.
“hi” he say’s
“Hi” I say back and almost continue on
“I sneaked out of the gate of the playground”
“Uhhh it might be a good idea if you go back”
“I think the lady knows I left”
“Did she say that you were allowed to leave?”
“I think she knows I had”
“Do you think that it might be better if you go back. Even if she does know, I am sure the playground is more interesting then the road”
“Yeh Ok”
So I accompany him back and make sure he is safely on the other side of the gate to the playground.
The run went much better than last time. It didn’t hurt anywhere as much, of course the bike hadn’t been so long or tough. But that made me feel a lot better about running of the bike
Ugggh going to get ice cream headache
So after an order from Jo to get into the open water, earlier this week, meant that rain or shine I was going to get into the icy water and try and swim. I wasn’t looking forward to it all that much. Nades and Geoff’s brother Rodger (oh I hope its Rodger, I am hopeless at remembering names)joined me for the first dip of the season.
It wasn’t all that bad. Though after swimming for a bit did make my face feel remarkably numb. We didn’t swim all that far, spent most of our time just lying there in the water. But it does mean I am now prepared for a proper swim session next week.
Womens tri… Frostbuster… Even Crater Rim (which I didn’t relise was on till it was over) are already over and done with. There are events coming up Twizel weekend this weekend (well I assume, haven’t looked into it. Do the have the kayak race back? that was fun). 5 passes at the end of October.
All these events and I don’t really care. It used to be I had to do EVERYTHING. I had all the events lined up for the year, and had to priortise them and cull a few as I went (which made me sad). But now I shrug the shoulders and not really caring. I have either done them before or haven’t. They were either a good day out or a challenge I would like to improve on. Maybe I am just getting lazy?Or maybe I am jsut over the constant need to race.
I’d prefer to go and do a big training weekend than a event as I feel its more benefical. Am slighlty sad about missing 5 passes, but life happened, it didn’t, so I moved on and changed my focus, maybe next year.
I asked Jo if I should do the next womens tri, but thats a key weekend in my training schedule so better I don’t. Plus I only wanted to do it to practice the transition (plus it would be interesting to see if I could go faster and woop some ass, or see if I end u middle of the pack like I used to).
So the only event lined up on the calendar before Wanaka is SI half. How very uninteresting of me….
Last week was a easy week, the only way to tell that would be to see that there was about 2 sessions less during the week and today I got the day OFF. I’m liking it, a day off training on the weekend. I don’t think I have done that, well since my last big break. Its been good to lase around this morning, no need to head of early for anything. Might see if I can get a few more of these days worked into the program.
But that is it for it being an easy week. The week included 2 biggish runs. A 90min run along the crater rim on thursday at dawn was very awesome. I drove up to the Takehe and went from there. I honestly felt a bit stupid driving the 5min or less it took to get there, but I just didn’t want the run to focused around a huge hill run. Is the crater rim track getting worse? or is it just because I am out of practise with off road running at the moment. I struggled occasionally at some parts on that track, probably me just out of practise.
Wednesday, I had planned to skip the Spin class and go out to Sumner and come back via the summit rd. I had taken my bike to work and ws al prepared for the post work expedition, when Tim comes and asks if I want to go to Lonestar (we are currently in the process of building them a new website and just launch grab a meal for them, check it out http://www.lonestargrabameal.co.nz/, it seems to be doing failry well) that night for a meal on work. hmmmm let me think about that…yeh why the heck not. So I left work 10min early, race home on the bike, do a quick blat up the hill and then 10min run of the bike, and then headed back to town for some food. Oh I ate a little bit too much….
But Saturday was the big day of the week, a 110K hill ride with a 20min run of the bike. I was either going to do long bays and head to purau and back or do short bays long bays or vice versa. As I was heading up Hackthorne I was still undecided on the plan of attack. My main concern of doing the 2 laps scenario, I had to go past home, and it would be very hard to keep myself from stopping after the one lap. Once I got to the kiwi, I decided short bays long bays it was. So down I went, for the first time descending to governors I didn’t slam the breaks on hard a crawl around the hair pin, I actually took it at a descent pace.
I was feel pretty good all the way around short bays, in fact it seemed a little to easy. I had decided to do proper long bays, ie go out the flat way to motukara. Its been a while since I had dine that way, and man it is head space boring and I was so glad to finally get to the hills again. Where I did a strip tease. It was a frustrating day weather wise, well it was nice weather, overcast, not to hot hatrdly no wind. But I kept getting too hot too cold. Think I ended up stopping half a dozen times getting clothes on or off.
The hills for the second time were a bit harder than the first. Just got progressively that intsy bit harder with every hill you meet, was very glad to get up Evans for the 2nd time that day. I purposely decided to avoid Murray Aynsley on the way home. Which considering is just bizarre, I put about as much effort into avoiding it as I would have if I had just gone and done it. Once home it was off for the 20min run. Oh that hurt, I know I have only been running of the bike for a couple of weeks, and that I still got a lot of training to go under the bridge yet. But I am slightly worried with how hard that run was….
Wanaka ….. 13 weeks and counting
Heres what happened in last weekend comedy of errors. So the plan was to do a 110K bike on saturday, with the standard 20min run after and the 1hr swim session.Then Sunday to do a Long Hill ride. (Well thats what I thought the plan was supposed to be, I’ll get to that later)
Saturday
So Saturday dawned and it was quite frankly a extremely crappy day, it was cold and drizzly. I was very tempted to roll have a lazy morning lying in bed. There was no run on the card that weekend, to swap with so I wrap up with layers and set of. The plan was to do the bridge st route with a extension out Mcleans Island. It was ok to start with as I headed to Sumner, wet but I was enjoying my self a fair amount. But when I turned around I was coming into a head wind and that head wind continued all the way to Brooklands. I was still positive looking forward to the way back, after all it was going to be a tail wind right? Not long after Brooklands I got my first puncture on the new bike.
It was much easier getting the tyres of than the old bike. But it was raining fairly hard at this point and I got extremely cold at this point. Once I got started again, my legs felt dead and I was feeling extremely drained. Where I was expecting a tail wind, I found I was still had a head wind. When I got to Mcleans Island I had decided to not extend the route and just do the standard Bridge st.
Going behind the airport I found that I was going directly into a full blasting southerly. I was down to 15k/h. I was getting very frustrated, and still had 30K left to go. I was easily doing calculations that if I kept at this speed all the way back I’d be another 2 hrs. When I reached Yaldhurst I was very tempted to call for help. But told myself not to be so stupid and looked to a more direct route home, finally I wasn’t going into a headwind and was actually going above 20k/h. I decided to try and extend the ride a bit more so I did do at least 100K.
Once I got home it took a lot of self talking to, to get back out side and do the run. It was a rather painful run as well.
That evening I had my standard 60min swim and was rather surprised I was feeling pretty good during it. Normally I feel crappy and unmotivated on that swim
Sunday
Sunday was a nice fine day. I was joining Nades on a journey around Long bays. She wanted to head of early so I was up early again. Its been awhile since me and Nades have actually ridden together, I was slightly worried that with my dead legs from yesterday that she’d be leaving me in her dust. But I can stilabsoultlyl hold my own
So up dyers we head (I don’t know why she prefers Dyers to hackthorne, to me it just hurts more) and then turn right at the kiwi and head along the summit to Coopers. I haven’t descended Coopers on my new bike before, and woohoo I had so much fun (I am finally getting my descending mojo back). That bike descends sooooo fast, you just don’t feel like you are going as fast as you actually are. There were a couple of corners I almost over shot because I misjudged the speed. But the scariness of descending has disappeared with the new bike.
I left Nades at Dyers again as she was heading to do short bays, but my day was over and my big training weekend on the bike was done
So come Sunday night I was filling in the training diary for the week. Low and behold the program said Sunday a 2.5hr hill RUN! How the hell had a read that wrong. I have no idea. I had this “big bike’ weekend in my brain all week. I obviously hadn’t checked the program again to see if I was right.Well nothing I could do about it now.
I have a very cool blog written in my head from my very adventuress weekend (and slightly wrong). However last night I couldn’t be bothered lifting the computer to put into cyberspace. Oh I feel that my blogging is putting me to shame. I must try harder… And maybe I’ll get last weekends blog out one day.
Figure of 8- Well almost
Yesterday, the weather forecast was a little dodgy. I tried off headed early, to keep ahead of the southerly or the nor’west which ever came first. But then I ended up mucking about in the morning and eventually made it out the door.
Well the plan for the day was to do the figure of eight, up to kiwi, goveners, Gebbies, Coopers, kiwi, govenors, evans, summit back to kiwi. Well I almost managed to do the whole lots, but F’ing Nor’weste just a pain at times. It was pretty much a great day until I reached sumner. It was a nice warm day, the wind was non existant until I started up Coopers, even then it wasn’t much to worry about.
It had been almost 2 years since the last time I went up Coopers and I was rather nervous about it leading up to it. You know how things that you haven’t done in a while start to seem bigger and scarier than they actually are (aka Kayaking). Anyway, as it turned out climb up Gebbies is harder than Coopers. I don’t particularly like going over cattle stops going up hill, always worried that there is no way to stop and put your foot down, while going over. Any way, I have a tendency to stop breathing for the couple of seconds I go over and then my breathing is all out of whack. So other than those couple of non-breathing periods I made it up with not to much difficulty. The Summit was starting to get windy, but nothing to scary, but did make me think, I will not be coming back along the summit on the way home. By that time I knew the wind would be up.
So finished my figure of eight plundering my way along the flat into a bloody head wind. With the main thought going through my head “I now remembering what I don’t like about chch in the spring, the F$@&(*g wind”. I was down to 16Km/h along the coursway. The ride home turned into the most frustrating slow part of the ride.
Oh I feel a little seasick
That afternoon I had a 60min swim. I was feeling ok, it not a little tired when I got in the pool. I was doing 500m x 3 set, by the 2nd one my head was in a splitting headache. By the 3rd I was feeling decidedly sea sick, it was a rather strange feeling. But I decided at the end of that set, it would be best to get out and go home. Oh well that was the end of that.
Yes, I am not imaging it, it is snowing
This morning it was a 2.5hr run up the hill. Was a rather hilly weekend 
Started off, if not warm but sunny and i was fairly quickly stripping of some layers. My legs were not feeling all that awesome, but I was ticking along at a ok pace. I headed up Rapaki, not exactly going at my normal pace but I was still running. It wasn’t long before it starting raining and then the hail started. I was running straight into it, was a little painful. It eventually cleared up a bit and I was running along the summit. Occasionally it rained and then, it started snowing! At first I thought it was just fine hail but when it started settling on my top I began to believe it was actually snow.
I decided to take a short cut back down to Victoria Park and some how managed to completely loose the track. A bit of off track butt Sliding and I eventually made it to a track I recognised. It started to piss down really heavily when I got to the cup and i eventaully got back home the sun come out
So for the last 2 weeks training has taken a bit of a back seat. But now we have moved, and (cross fingers) sold the other house (Its under offer at the moment). I don’t have to worry about moving, packing or cleaning.
And can take our time setting up the new house. (She says as she sits in the middle of a lounge on half of her lounge suite surrounded by cables, electrical equipment and not much else, we have a decided lack of furniture at the moment.)
But anyway, I can now start cincentrating back on the training and getting the hours back up again. I got my new 6 week programme last week. Phew there are big weekends ahead. We are keeping the weekdays fairly light, concentrating on the higher instensity sessions but fewer. This is just because I struggle often with work and getting 2 sessions a day in, so we have dropped a few days to only 1 sessions. And it honestly is making this week much easier. Plus I have finally been given some brick sessions, going to have to get used to having the shoes ready to go whenever I get of the bike.
So I have only been living here for 5 days and I am loving the easy access to training. Today it was a easy bike ride to spin and then home quick. On the weekend I did sumner- summit and back in just over 1:30 (hmm I am going to have to make some of my normal routes longer to make up the time). Tommorow morning, I have a short hill run, whereas before I would have to have all my gear ready to go for the next day and drive all the way to the hill, tommorow I can just run out the door. Though its going to be interesting working out routes that take me 40, 50, 60mins. I am sure I am going to a bit out for a few weeks.
But most important and goal for the next 6weeks is LOSE the F%&#@*^g weight. I have been lazy and really bad with food the last few weeks. I gotta stop that (I have honestly been sitting here thinking I need something sweet, maybe I could pop down to the shop and get a ice cream… ughhhhhh)
